The Most Popular Beer Served In Rhode Island Restaurants Is…

BeerMenus.com just released their state-by-state data.

The beer market in the United States is being completely up-ended. There are countless stories about how people are drinking less beer…and when they do have a brew, it’s less likely to be one of the big three (Bud, Miller or Coors) and more likely to be a craft beer.

But not in Rhode Island

In Rhode Island (and nearby Connecticut and Massachusetts and ten other states), the beer most likely to appear on a restaurant menu is…Bud Light. In fact, according to the data set, you can get Bud Light in 73% of Rhode Island restaurants, which is about the highest in states without small numbers of respondents.

Here’s how the rest of the map looks:

We have to say, what’s interesting about this map isn’t the macrobrews…or even states that love their hometown craft beers, but the states where the most popular beers are craft beers brewed in other states. For example, the beer most available in North Dakota is Shiner Bock…which is brewed in Texas. We’re just going to take a guess and suggest that the fracking boom up there brought up a whole bunch of Texas boys who like their state’s own brew.

Further down south, Abita is brewed in Louisiana, but Bud Light reigns over that state. Next door in Mississippi, however, Abita Select Amber is on top.

Finally, the big outlier on the map is Alaska, where the beer most readily available in bars in restaurants is…Lindemans Framboise? Either beer drinking habits in our northernmost state are utterly bizarre compared to the rest of the country…or we’ve got an outlier caused by a small sample size or something, because lambics are never the most popular beer anywhere.

One explanation: Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming had less than 10 restaurants, which means their information probably has a pretty high margin of error.